Obama On Area 51, Police Spying on Cell Phone Users, World's Most Honest President
Revealing News Articles
December 17, 2013

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Below are key excerpts of important news articles on U.S. President Barack Obama being the first U.S. president to mention Area 51 of UFO fame, local and state police secretly monitoring cell phone users in their jurisdictions, major prison profiteering, and more.

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In an affair usually noted for its glitz and glamour, President Obama made news at the 2013 Kennedy Center Honors as the first president to utter the words "Area 51." A beloved subject of conspiracy theorists and UFO enthusiasts, the government testing site, officially known as the Nevada Test and Training Range, and Groom Lake, came up during Sunday night's gala when the president was honoring actress Shirley MacLaine. "Now, when you first become president, one of the questions that people ask you is, what's really going on in Area 51?" Obama said to the audience. "When I wanted to know, I'd call Shirley MacLaine. ... I think I just became the first president to ever publicly mention Area 51." Area 51 was only officially acknowledged this past August in declassified CIA documents that were released following a Freedom of Information Act request submitted [to] the National Security Archive. [The] documents revealed that Area 51 was merely a testing site for government aerial surveillance programs such as U-2 and Oxcart. The Academy award-winning actress has been plenty vocal in the past about her beliefs in alien encounters. MacLaine has talked about her personal alien encounters in her 2007 book Sage-ing While Age-ing and during a 2011 interview on Oprah in which she shared stories of witnessing UFOs from her New Mexico home. "I've seen a mother ship here, and I've seen them at my ranch," MacLaine said. "One famous day, a friend of mine was sitting in my hot tub out there, and three UFOs came over and hovered over the hot tub for about 10 minutes."

Note: For a report with more info on CBS news, click here. For a highly intriguing video related to Area 51 featuring David Adair, click here. For more on UFOs, see our deeply revealing UFO Information Center available here.

The National Security Agency isn't the only government entity secretly collecting data from people's cellphones. Local police are increasingly scooping it up, too.
Armed with new technologies, including mobile devices that tap into cellphone data in real time, dozens of local and state police agencies are capturing information about thousands of cellphone users at a time, whether they are targets of an investigation or not. The records, from more than 125 police agencies in 33 states, reveal [that] about one in four law-enforcement agencies have used a tactic known as a "tower dump," which gives police data about the identity, activity and location of any phone that connects to the targeted cellphone towers over a set span of time, usually an hour or two. A typical dump covers multiple towers, and wireless providers, and can net information from thousands of phones. At least 25 police departments own a Stingray, a suitcase-size device that costs as much as $400,000 and acts as a fake cell tower. The system, typically installed in a vehicle so it can be moved into any neighborhood, tricks all nearby phones into connecting to it and feeding data to police. In some states, the devices are available to any local police department via state surveillance units. Organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union and Electronic Privacy Information Center say the swelling ability by even small-town police departments to easily and quickly obtain large amounts of cellphone data raises questions about the erosion of people's privacy as well as their Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure.

Note: For more on massive government intrusions of citizens' privacy, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh accused the Obama administration ... of having "cherry-picked intelligence" regarding the Aug. 21 chemical attack in Syria that served as evidence for an argument in favor of striking President Bashar Assad's government. Though President Barack Obama eventually decided not to strike Syria, the administration made a public case for war by saying that Assad's regime was responsible for a poison gas attack in the outskirts of Damascus. The U.N. later concluded the attack had involved the nerve agent sarin. In his piece -- titled "Whose Sarin?" -- Hersh reported that al-Nusra, a jihadi group fighting in Syria's long-running civil war, had also "mastered the mechanics of creating sarin and was capable of manufacturing it in quantity." Therefore, he wrote, "Obama did not tell the whole story" when stating with certainty that Assad had to be responsible, crossing a so-called "red line" that would trigger U.S. retaliation. Hersh is a freelancer, but he's best known these days for his work in The New Yorker, where he helped break the Abu Ghraib scandal in 2004. In an email, Hersh wrote that "there was little interest" for the story at The New Yorker. Hersh then took the story to The Washington Post. Hersh wrote that he was told by email that Executive Editor Marty Baron decided "that the sourcing in the article did not meet the Post's standards." Hersh [then] sent the Syria story to editors at the London Review of Books, LRB Senior Editor Christian Lorentzen [said]. Lorentzen said the piece was not only edited, but thoroughly fact checked by a former New Yorker fact checker who had worked with Hersh in the past.

Note: For more on government lies to provide pretexts for war, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.

A participant in a White House-sponsored review of surveillance activities described as "shameful" an apparent decision to leave most of the National Security Agency's controversial bulk spying intact. Sascha Meinrath, director of the Open Technology Institute, said [on December 13] that ... "The review group was searching for ways to make the most modest pivot necessary to continue business as usual." Should the review group's report resemble descriptions that leaked ... the report "does nothing to alter the lack of trust the global populace has for what the US is doing, and nothing to restore our reputation as an ethical internet steward," said Meinrath, who met with the advisory panel and White House officials twice to discuss the bulk surveillance programs that have sparked international outrage. Leaks about the review group's expected recommendations to the New York Times and Wall Street Journal strengthened Meinrath and other participants' long-standing suspicions that much of the NSA's sweeping spy powers would survive. The Times quoted an anonymous official familiar with the group saying its report "says we can't dismantle these programs, but we need to change the way almost all of them operate". According to the leaks, the review group will recommend that bulk collection of every American's phone call data continue, possibly by the phone companies instead of the NSA, with tighter restrictions than the "reasonable, articulable suspicion" standard for searching through them that the NSA currently employs.

Note: For more on massive government intrusions of citizens' privacy, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.

"CCA" has become a dirty word. Kanye West cited it when rapping about America's class of "New Slaves." Anonymous invoked it to describe a bad financial investment that undermines justice. And for state after state, the word represents a failed approach to public safety. Profiting off mass incarceration is a dirty business. Private prison company Corrections Corporation of America [CCA] squanders taxpayer money and runs facilities rife with human rights abuses. All private prison companies have corrupting incentives. One is to save money by cutting corners. Another is to promote their bottom line. Although CCA isn't the only company with these incentives, it has done more than any other corporation to [make] the private prison industry into a behemoth plagued by abuse and neglect and profiting off our nation's over-reliance on incarceration. CCA routinely shirks its responsibility to comply with basic standards. In Idaho, CCA employees falsified nearly 4,800 hours of staffing records. In Ohio, auditors found outrageous violations like prison without running water for toilets, in which prisoners had no choice but to use plastic bags for defecation and cups for urination. And yet, CCA made $1.7 billion in just the last year -- more than any other private prison company. The company pours money into both lobbying and campaign contributions. From 2002 to 2012, CCA devoted more than $19 million to lobbying Congress, and its PAC shelled out over $1.4 million to candidates for federal office during the same time period.

Note: CCA is just one of the many powerful entities getting rich off mass incarceration. Meet the other Prison Profiteers and take action to fight their abuses at PrisonProfiteers.org. For a video exposing this craziness, click here. For more on corruption in the government-prison-industrial complex, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.

The healthcare provider Corizon makes an estimated $1.4 billion off sick prisoners every year. With profits like those, you would think it was actually treating prisoners. But in states that are using Corizon to provide healthcare in their prisons–and right now twenty-nine are–medical neglect and abuse run rampant. Corizon's attitude toward the debilitating virus Hepatitis C is especially alarming: They just don't treat it. Last year alone, no fewer than seven sick prisoners died at Metro Corrections, a jail in Louisville, Kentucky, while on Corizon's watch. The company made headlines when six employees quit their jobs, according to local press, "amid an investigation by the jail that found that the workers 'may' have contributed" to two of the deaths. This summer, it was announced that the contract between Corizon and the city would not be renewed. The Nation's Liliana Segura gives an overview of the massive scope of the crisis of companies profiting off mass incarceration: "With 2.3 million people incarcerated in the United States," she writes, "prisons are big business."

Note: For a video exposing this craziness, click here. Corizon is just one of the many powerful entities getting rich off mass incarceration. Meet the other Prison Profiteers and take action to fight their abuses at PrisonProfiteers.org. For more on corruption in the government-prison-industrial complex, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.

Genetically modified maize causes cancer: that was the gist of one of the most controversial studies in recent memory, published in September 2012 by Food and Chemical Toxicology. [But] on November 28th the journal retracted it. The article was by Gilles-Eric Séralini of the University of Caen, in France, and his colleagues. It described what happened to rats fed with NK603 maize, a variety made resistant to a herbicide called glyphosate by a genetic modification made by Monsanto. Monsanto also discovered glyphosate's herbicidal properties. It sells it under the trade name "Roundup". In Dr Séralini's experiment, rats fed with the modified maize were reckoned more likely to develop tumours than those which had not been. Females were especially badly affected: their death rates were two or three times as high as those of control groups. The article was explosive. Jean-Marc Ayrault, France's prime minister, said that if its results were confirmed his government would press for a Europe-wide ban on NK603 maize. Russia suspended imports of the crop. Kenya banned all GM crops. Though the paper has been retracted, that is unlikely to be end of the matter. The journal's publisher said there was "no evidence of fraud or intentional misrepresentation of the data", which are the usual justifications for retraction. Scientific opinion runs strongly against the conclusion that GM foods are harmful–but not universally so. A group called the European Network of Scientists for Social and Environmental Responsibility backed Dr Séralini.

Note: Over 100 scientists have signed a pledge to boycott Elsevier, the publisher of the journal which retracted the GMO study, as you can see at this link. For an excellent video review of the study, click here. For more on the health risks of GMO foods, see the deeply revealing report available here.

Federal officials on [December 9] unsealed five criminal cases filed against 18 current and former Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies as part of an FBI investigation into allegations of civil rights abuses and corruption in the nation's largest jail system. Four grand jury indictments and a criminal complaint allege unjustified beatings of jail inmates and visitors at downtown Los Angeles jail facilities, unjustified detentions and a conspiracy to obstruct a federal investigation into misconduct at the Men's Central Jail. The FBI has been investigating allegations of excessive force and other misconduct at the county's jails since at least 2011. [An] official said the arrests were related to the abuse of individuals in the jail system and also allegations that sheriff's officials moved an FBI informant in the jails possibly to thwart their probe. Among those charged with conspiracy and obstruction of justice in the 18-page indictment are two lieutenants, one of whom oversaw the department's safe jails program and another who investigated allegations of local crimes committed by sheriff's personnel, two sergeants and three deputies. All seven are accused of trying to prevent the FBI from contacting or interviewing an inmate who was helping federal agents in a corruption and civil rights probe. In an attempt to find out more information about the investigation, one lieutenant and the two sergeants sought a court order to compel the FBI to provide documents, prosecutors said. When a state judge denied the proposed order, the two sergeants allegedly attempted to intimidate one of the lead FBI agents outside her house and falsely told her they were going to seek a warrant for her arrest, the indictment said.

Note: For more on government corruption, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.

[Since] Sept. 11, 2001, victims' loved ones, injured survivors, and members of the media have all tried without much success to discover the true nature of the relationship between the 19 hijackers – 15 of them Saudi nationals – and the Saudi Arabian government. Many news organizations reported that some of the terrorists were linked to the Saudi royals and that they even may have received financial support from them as well as from several mysterious, moneyed Saudi men living in San Diego. Saudi Arabia has repeatedly denied any connection. But earlier this year, Reps. Walter B. Jones, R-N.C., and Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., were given access to the 28 redacted pages of the [Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities before and after the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001] issued in late 2002, which have been thought to hold some answers about the Saudi connection to the attack. Last week, Jones and Lynch introduced a resolution that urges President Obama to declassify the 28 pages, which were originally classified by President George W. Bush. It has never been fully explained why the pages were blacked out, but President Bush stated in 2003 that releasing the pages would violate national security. Some of the information has leaked out over the years ... that the 28 pages in fact clearly portray that the Saudi government had at the very least an indirect role in supporting the terrorists responsible for the 9/11 attack. In addition, these classified pages clarify somewhat the links between the hijackers and at least one Saudi government worker living in San Diego.

Note: For more on the government cover-up of the truth behind 9/11, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.

The Catholic Archbishop of Brisbane [Australia] has admitted to "spectacular bungling" and "drastic failure" in dealing with a child sex abuse victim and flagged his willingness to revisit cases where victims' needs have not been met.
Archbishop Mark Coleridge said it was wrong that insurers and lawyers had determined how much victims were paid out. His archdiocese had $52 million from which he was prepared to draw for victim payouts. ''In the end, I [as archbishop] decide whether a sum conforms to the criteria of justice and compassion''. In the strongest statements yet by a senior Australian Catholic Church official about the church's mishandling of sex abuse claims, Archbishop Coleridge said a "tsunami" of child sexual abuse allegations had caught bishops and other officials "like rabbits in a headlight". The failures of the Towards Healing protocol, in use since 1997, meant other ways of dealing with victim complaints needed to be explored "if we are serious about coming to the aid of victims", the archbishop told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. He said powerful cultural factors had converged to create a "perfect storm" around child sex abuse in the church. One factor was the "absurd" lack of training in the past for would-be priests about human and sexual relationships: "We have reaped the harvest of horror of that". The Brisbane archdiocese has had 99 cases of child sex abuse and nine current matters, with $2.5 million in payments made to victims.

Note: For more on sexual abuse scandals involving respected institutions, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.

Only 12 of the hundreds of staff members accused of child abuse in Ireland's Christian Brothers order since the mid-1970s have been convicted, the watchdog of the country's Catholic Church said [on December 10]. The report from the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church looked into how the Christian Brothers, a Catholic order set up to run schools, handled abuse allegations. It said although abuse claims were made against 325 of the order's officials since 1975, only a dozen were convicted of crimes. It was the latest setback for the Christian Brothers, whose history of running schools for boys across Ireland dates back to the early 1800s. The order's reputation has been damaged in recent years by the revelation of widespread child abuse in Irish Catholic institutions. Cardinal Sean Brady, the leader of Ireland's 4 million Catholics who himself was widely criticized for being implicated in covering up the abuse of children, said he is "truly sorry". The report was released along with a series of others on dioceses around Ireland. In the Armagh Archdiocese, run by Brady, the watchdog reported that there was a lack of records on allegations made before 1995. It said the situation has improved since then and praised Brady for the improved safeguarding of children.

Note: For more on sexual abuse scandals involving respected institutions, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.

Lord Patten, the chairman of the BBC Trust, has warned a Conservative MP that he risks legal action if he publishes evidence calling into question the corporation's handling of the Jimmy Savile scandal. Robert Wilson, Tory MP for Reading East, has obtained an audio recording in which the author of an independent inquiry into the scandal at the BBC reportedly undermines his own findings. [Wilson] is planning to publish the audio recording today but Lord Patten has written to him warning that he should be "weighing up the legal liabilities that might arise". Nick Pollard, the former head of Sky News, last year [led] an independent inquiry into the BBC's decision to drop a Newsnight investigation into allegations of sex abuse by Savile. Mr Pollard's final report found that while the decision was "flawed", it was not driven by a desire to avoid a clash with tribute programmes. However, it did not include testimony from Helen Boaden, the BBC's former Head of News. She alleged that Mark Thompson, the corporation's former director-general, was aware of the content of the Newsnight investigation. Despite her testimony Mr Pollard's inquiry found that there was "no evidence to doubt" Mr Thompson's version of events. In the audio recording obtained by Mr Wilson, Mr Pollard reportedly privately admits that he was wrong to overlook Miss Boaden's evidence. The report disclosed that BBC executives were warned that Jimmy Savile had a "darker side" but pressed on regardless with tribute programmes to the child abuser.

Note: The evidence was released in full. To read or listen to the tape, click here. For more on sexual abuse scandals involving respected institutions, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.

If anyone could claim to be leading by example in an age of austerity, it is José Mujica, Uruguay's president, who has forsworn a state palace in favour of a farmhouse, donates the vast bulk of his salary to social projects, flies economy class and drives an old Volkswagen Beetle. But the former guerrilla fighter is clearly disgruntled by those who tag him "the world's poorest president" and – much as he would like others to adopt a more sober lifestyle – the 78-year-old has been in politics long enough to recognise the folly of claiming to be a model for anyone. "If I asked people to live as I live, they would kill me," Mujica said during an interview in his small but cosy one-bedroom home set amid chrysanthemum fields outside Montevideo. The president is a former member of the Tupamaros guerrilla group, which was notorious in the early 1970s for bank robberies, kidnappings and distributing stolen food and money among the poor. He was shot by police six times and spent 14 years in a military prison, much of it in dungeon-like conditions. Since becoming leader of Uruguay in 2010, however, he has won plaudits worldwide for living within his means, decrying excessive consumption and pushing ahead with policies on same-sex marriage, abortion and cannabis legalisation that have reaffirmed Uruguay as the most socially liberal country in Latin America. But the man who is best known as Pepe says those who consider him poor fail to understand the meaning of wealth. "I'm not the poorest president. The poorest is the one who needs a lot to live," he said. "My lifestyle is a consequence of my wounds. I'm the son of my history."

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concises summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.

Jay Shafer sweats the small stuff. Hopping into a waist-high metal bathtub smaller than a shower stall, Shafer swung a faucet over his head to demonstrate how one bathes in the combination tub/shower/sink. Gesturing at the composting toilet a foot away, he added: "This bathroom is the part of this house I'm proudest of. It was inspired by the Japanese model of being very compact and very efficient. The whole room is 11 square feet, smaller than a standard closet." Thinking small, targeting simplicity and paying meticulous attention to detail exemplify Shafer's craft: designing tiny houses. The Sonoma County resident is considered a father of the tiny house movement, a burgeoning trend to live more efficiently in less space. "Jay articulated and popularized a philosophy of live small, live debt free, and have more time and freedom to pursue your life's passions," said Ryan Mitchell, editor of TheTinyLife.com, a website dedicated to living in small-scale structures. "He backed it up with some really attractive designs." From a 119-square-foot house in Graton, Shafer, 49, writes books about small dwellings; whips up blueprints for Craftsman-style houses ranging from 98 to 288 square feet; plans weekend workshops for DIYers; and sketches out his latest brainstorm: an entire village with dozens of tiny dwellings, each less than 400 square feet, plus a larger common house and other shared amenities, to be erected in Sonoma County. In fact, the county is a hotbed of the small-house movement, with an annual exhibit at the Sonoma County Fair, several small-house companies and at least 100 tiny dwellings.

No one is immune from bullying. Whether you are the oppressor, the victim or the witness, you are part of a cycle that needs to end. A new video shows just how much power a bystander has. "By watching an act of bullying with the thought of, 'I was going to step in if it kept going,' you may be too late," says a description for [the] video. This video highlights that passive bystanders are as much to blame as the actual bully because they have the capacity to do something. This doesn't necessarily mean directly intervening, the video points out. It could mean getting a more able-bodied person to step in, filming or calling for help. At the end of the video, a group of people ignore the violence -- perhaps because of a diffusion of responsibility, a phenomenon that psychologists say happens when a task is placed before a group of people, but each assumes the other will take action. When everyone has this same thought, however, no one does anything. The hope is that videos like these will help to educate and empower bystanders to help end bullying.

Note: Don't miss the powerful video at the link above. And for an inspiring four-minute video featuring Challenge Day, which was the main force in promoting the movement to stop bullying, click here. Explore a treasure trove of concises summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.

Swedish prisons have long had a reputation around the world as being liberal and progressive. The head of Sweden's prison and probation service, Nils Oberg, announced in November that four Swedish prisons are to be closed due to an "out of the ordinary" decline in prisoner numbers. Although there has been no fall in crime rates, between 2011 and 2012 there was a 6% drop in Sweden's prisoner population, now a little over 4,500. A similar decrease is expected this year and the next. The Swedes [have] managed to maintain a broadly humane approach to sentencing, even of the most serious offenders: jail terms rarely exceed 10 years; those who receive life imprisonment can still apply to the courts after a decade to have the sentence commuted to a fixed term, usually in the region of 18 to 25 years. Sweden was the first country in Europe to introduce the electronic tagging of convicted criminals and continues to strive to minimise short-term prison sentences wherever possible by using community-based measures – proven to be more effective at reducing reoffending. The overall reoffending rate in Sweden stands at between 30 and 40% over three years – around half that in the UK. One likely factor that has kept reoffending down and the rate of incarceration in Sweden below 70 per 100,000 head of population – less than half the figure for England and Wales – is that the age of criminal responsibility is set at 15. Unlike the UK, where a life sentence can be handed down to a 10-year-old, in Sweden no young person under the age of 21 can be sentenced to life and every effort is made to ensure that as few juvenile offenders as possible end up in prison.

Note: For a Time magazine article showing how Norway's prisons actually rehabilitate prisoners so that they can more easily fit back in society, click here. Explore a treasure trove of concises summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.

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